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Transcript

The Real Reason Your Prayers Feel Empty · Faith at Work

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Alright, it is amazing what a week can change.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: When I wrote the first draft of the sermon that I'm about to preach last week,
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: we were in a drought.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: I've been talking this summer to a number of you that visit Smith Mountain Lake on
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: a regular, alright?
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: And you have been telling me how Smith Mountain Lake is down,
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: the water level is down, and it's down a lot.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: Eight feet below its normal level.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: A friend of mine who has a boat lift at Smith Mountain Lake,
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: one of those boat lifts that lifts the boat off of the water and holds it out of
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: the water so it doesn't get nasty,
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: Told me that the water was so low that his boat lift wouldn't go down far enough
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: to put the boat into the water.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know,
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: last week I was imagining that,
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: that boat was just hanging there all summer waiting for the water to come back up.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: That same drought that is pulling water from Smith Mountain Lake...
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's also pulling from our drinking water,
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: and it is pulling from our rainwater that we need for our crops here in the valley.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: We were desperate for rain.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: That was last week, at least for me.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: Then the rains came, and they came.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: And they came, and they came almost every single day on my farm.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: All week long as I planned this sermon on desperation and a drought.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: And now, today, most of us, at least I am, desperate for the rains to stop.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I know, sorry.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: And the ground to dry up so that we, on my farm at least, can mow the grass and get the corn.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: And how things change.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: And how things stay the same.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: Because we are still desperate just for something different than it was last week.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: Psalm 119 is the longest chapter in the Bible.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: 176 verses built as an acrostic,
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: which basically is the entire Hebrew alphabet from alpha to top.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: And back in July,
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: when we sent our youth off to National Youth Conference,
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: we sat together in the noon section, the middle of that long alphabet.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: And the verse about the lamp and the path.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: This morning, we're further back into the alphabet.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: The fifth letter, Hay.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: Earlier in the walk,
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: earlier in the alphabet of somebody's journey through their whole life with God.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: As we read these eight verses that you kind of heard in the call to worship
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: and you heard read again from the Bible,
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: I want us to notice the desperation that is in these verses.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: Teach me.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: Give me.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: Lead me.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: Turn my heart.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: Turn my eye.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: Confirm your word.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: Turn away my disgrace.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: I long.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: Almost every line in this stanza is a verb aimed at God and almost every verb is
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: in desperate motion.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing here sits still.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: Teaching moves you from not knowing to knowing.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: Turning moves you from one direction to another.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: Even the longing in the last verse,
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: the ache the psalmist names outright, is its own kind of motion.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: A leaning of a whole body towards something it is missing and needs, but doesn't have yet.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's not a separate request stacked one after the other.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: It is one long, moving plea, the way water...
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: Moving in our valley from the ridge to the river.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'd like us to just kind of go through things and look at each.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: Sounds like I lost a sound, but you can hear it, right?
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: Great.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: The stanza opens with three words for road.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: Teach me, Lord, the way of your decrees.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: The word for way, Derek,
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: is the ordinary Hebrew word for a road,
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: a course, the distance between where you are and where you're needing to go.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: Two verses later, it becomes native, a path.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's a narrower word,
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: the kind of a trail that you would walk on foot rather than
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: the wide road you would travel by.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: And in between them sits banan, understanding, which in Hebrew isn't a spectator's word.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: It isn't standing back and getting the concept.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's closer to discernment you can only get by moving through something.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: The kind of understanding a farmer has about weather that a forecast can't give you.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: Notice what the psalmist is not asking for.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: He isn't asking God to explain the destination.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: He isn't asking for the whole map.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: He is asking to be taught the way, led on the path.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: Given the kind of understanding you only get by walking the
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: That is a request
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: for companionship on the road,
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: not a request for a photograph of where the road ends up.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: And then the stanza turns desperate.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: Turn my heart toward your statutes and not toward selfish gain.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: Turn my eyes from worthless things.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: The Hebrew verb, natah, means to bend, to physically redirect.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: Interesting, the same word is used elsewhere for pitching a tent beside someone.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: So this isn't a request for better priorities.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: It is a request for nearness, to move close enough to camp beside God and stay there.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: The way we used to do at church retreats.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: Anybody remember that?
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I'm glad one of you does.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: And then the word turns to a word that I kind of liken to, grace.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: Turn my eyes from worthless things and give me life.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: Give me life.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: Quicken me.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: Be gracious to me.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: And then more desperately confirm your promise to your servant.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: Confirm comes from the Hebrew verb for standing something up, establishing something.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: And right beside it, turn away the disgrace I dread.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: So the psalmist names his own fear outright,
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: being on display as someone who trusted a promise that didn't hold and asked God
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: to take it away.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: That is not weakness.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: It is the fear you only feel inside of a real relationship,
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: having trusted a person who might not come through for you.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: You do not dread disgrace over a rule that you memorize.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: You dread it over a relationship you stake something real on.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: And then the last line summarizes the whole desperate plea.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: Behold, I long for your precepts.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: Tavah is the same root word used for hunger,
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: for craving, the kind of longing that keeps you up at night.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: Notice too, none of these eight verses actually ask God for information.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: Teach me.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: Lead me, turn me, give me life.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: Those are requests of someone who wants a person near her across an ordinary day.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: Not Emmanuel.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: That's what tzadake, right relationship, means.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: He longs for God the way you long for someone you love and haven't seen in too long.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: So here is where the stanza has been moving us, I think.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: I long, I hunger, not for information about you, but for you.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: I cannot get there on my own power.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: I want you near me so badly that it hurts.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: This prayer of the psalmist is a desperate prayer, and not because of a lesser kind of faith.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: Henry Nouwen,
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: that I mention on a regular here,
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: spent much of his life writing about this same kind of movement.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: His book,
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: Reaching Out,
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: says that the whole spiritual life is a series of movements,
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: not a destination you arrive at and then rest in.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: Movement.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: Always movement.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: What God offers us is companionship on the road.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: And what we bring is a desperate desire to keep walking the road beside the God
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: who is already walking it too.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: Last week we talked a little bit about Moses at a bush that would not burn up.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: The story turned on one small detail.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: Moses noticed.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: He was curious.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: He said, I will turn aside and see this great sight.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: He could have walked past it, half noticed, and then forgotten.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: His curiosity instead put him in the one place where God was ready to say his name out loud.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: I wonder how curious we are.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: Somewhere along the way, a lot of us traded curiosity about God for information about God.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: When was the last time you turned aside for God?
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: Not because you needed something,
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: but simply because you wanted to know God more intimately,
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: more fully, and more deeply.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: Notice how fast our desperation shifted this week.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: At least mine.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: Desperate for rain seven days ago and now desperate for it to stop today.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: For real.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: Both prayers are honest, but they both share something.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: They're prayers about what we want God to do.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: Start the rain.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: Stop the rain.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: Grow the corn.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: Harvest the corn.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: Prayers to a God we mostly need for outcomes.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: The way you might call a utility company.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: Not a life companion.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: So ask yourself, what are you actually desperate for?
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: Some circumstances you want change.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: Or underneath that, is it God willing?
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: His nearness, his presence through the parts of your week nobody else sees.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: The psalmist never asks God to fix a circumstance.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: He is desperate for God, not merely for what God might arrange in his life.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: If you are a farmer or a parent,
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: you know what it is to want something so badly, you cannot make it happen yourself.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: Let that desperate wanting help you foster a right relationship with God this week.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: If you're newer to the faith,
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: you may pray desperately for the presence of God like this stanza
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: without even trying.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: I know I did earlier on in my faith walk.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: Don't lose that.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: Some of us with more years in the faith have learned to sound like we've got it together.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: And it has cost us the hunger this song is asking God to keep alive.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: And perhaps if you're watching this later on the video or in one of the shorts
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: that I put out on social media,
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: that desperate wanting travels through the screen to you today just as well.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: You are not too far away to ask for God's presence.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: We got at least a partial answer this week.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: As fast,
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: most of us went looking for the next desperate prayer before we even said thank you
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: for the last one.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: So here's what I want us to carry out of this sanctuary today.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: Not the desperation that only knows how to ask for the next outcome.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, the desperation that keeps turning back toward God himself.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: One more time.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever the weather happens to be doing.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: Because it still believes there is a God to turn towards.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: Teach us the way.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: Lead us in the path.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: Turn our hearts.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: Turn our eyes.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: And give us life in the turning.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: Confirm.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: Take our shame away.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: We long for you, not only for what you can do for us.